re: Any CrossFit gym owners here? How did you start your gym?

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If you have 100 members at $100/mont

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The going rate for CF membership in big cities is much higher than $100. Yo are looking at $160-180 in the New Orleans area, and even higher in places with a higher cost of living.

Even in most small places you are looking at $120-130 minimum.

It all comes down to a good business plan. And I mean you have to be true with your numbers.

I just got out of the gym business, was not crossfit but that should not mater. Its all membership based

X $0.00 to operate VS Y $0.00 of memberships. You need to be to get hard numbers on this, Believe me. I was not and suffered for a long 6 yrs, and still walked away with a large amount of $$ that I owe the bank. I would have loved to have read this before I made my 1st loan.
Not saying you cant do it because many people do, but if you looking for side cash, not planning on being there everyday yourself, walk away

If OP is serious, Alan Thrall and Brian Alsruhe both have multiple good YouTube videos detailing opening a gym and the issues you confront.

I'd recommend watching those plus a few videos Dave Tate has on building a small business.

They all lay out the difficulty and how it is something that doesn't happen without full commitment.

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Cost of payroll was a catch 22, cheap payroll did not get you new members, so had to higher better people at a higher $$, but that did not fit in to our P&L's

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Were they not 1099?

Good posts. A friend runs a CF gym here in town. A short summary of the problems confronted from that perspective:

1. How does your client base know you exist? A lot of people think this is a startup issue, but it's constant.

2. How do you turn uneducated people away from Globogym? Most average people go for the cheap memberships at generic chains and aren't particularly educated about fitness. The educated people have their own lane already.

3. CF gyms depend on the day to day operator. That's why I think the side hustle doesn't work. You have the vision that has to be communicated to members. If you just hire someone, you're betting a lot of money that there's a smart person with a compelling personality waiting for your call.

4. If you succeed, people will copy you and steal your market share. If it works too well, and you've identified a market deficiency, others will want in. Heck, the guy you hired to run day to day operations might want to start his own place and take all your members.

5. Attrition. Some people won't like what you do. Some will just move or have kids and lose interest. This means you have to be invested in constantly attacking problems 1-4.

My best summary of the issues I've seen, although not in my own life.

so my neighbor had one and failed, some of his biggest issues were it was not his primary job.

he had issues having class times consistent where people could attend. Those that helped him coach were inconsistant also because they had their own lifes and jobs to tend to.

Also advertising is hard and CF type gyms are expensive for most people.

Biggest mistake was though, he had never programmed for big groups of trainees that are all different levels and have different goals. I heard constant complaints from friends that went there. Also he was not the most inshape guy and this rubbed many the wrong way.

he also didn't offer anything other than a the classes that made him stand out. No nutritional services, no supplement sevices etc but the biggest thing was performance wise people weren't hitting their goals. If you start posting on facebook about women doing dead hang pullups or muscleups, hitting aesthitic goals etc it draws buzz and gets your name out there.

SO bottom line unless you have lots of expierence of programming for a wide variety of trainees and understand how to break them up into groups....then don't do it. The best advertising is your clients and if they aren't making extreme progress in the aesthetic or performance departments then people will have no reason to come see you.

So before you committ to this understand it will need be a full time committment. Also understand on top of having a very very detailed business plan you will need to have a very very detailed programming plan and have any other services you plan to offer laid out in a very detailed plan.

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2. How do you turn uneducated people away from Globogym? Most average people go for the cheap memberships at generic chains and aren't particularly educated about fitness. The educated people have their own lane already.

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This is the big issue. CF or other specialized program, how do you differentiate yourself enough to bring in "the novice gym goes who isn't ready for a lifestyle change" and keep them there and paying your premium membership over XXX generic big gym membership. Like you said the more educated folks are probably already someplace they like and already doing their own programming.

Even on this board it feels like more than half of the folks doing programming similar to CF workout at non CF associates facilities, including home gyms, that are probably significantly cheaper.

I noticed that too. We have at least 4 days of lifting per week.